I’ve written a bunch of blog posts about why profits are more important than growth. It’s funny how the people who respond negatively to these posts are advisors or people who used to be in business. Business owners who have successful companies seem to get this principle.

If someone asks you how you are going to grow your business I bet your answer will be explaining how you’re going to grow sales. For most that’s the answer. Sometimes it makes sense to look at another option. Instead of growing sales how about growing profits?

This is a central question I believe everyone who works with our firm should ask. You share important information about your finances, dreams, and life with us. You aren’t going to do that unless you have a high level of trust in us. I spend a lot of time thinking about this and working with our staff to learn about how trust is built and how to audit our actions to make sure we’re acting in a trustworthy manner.

Several years ago I ran across a book called The Trusted Advisor. The genius in this book is the authors developed a formula for you to easily check whether you’re being trustworthy.

If you’re involved in a private business you’re also involved in a family business. If you’re the owner you already know this. If you’re an employee you might want to think about what this means.

Private businesses that are owned and run by individuals are different from public companies or companies owned by private equity. Private business owners can make decisions that those who work for other owners believe they can’t make.

I’m a big fan of the Heath Brothers. Their most recent book Decisive introduced a new concept for me, the trip wire. I love this concept. It’s a pre-determined point where you decide to stop or help someone make a different decision.

I recently asked a client of mine to start the process of asking his family who should own the family business. This is a question that you need to ask if you have more than one child and one of them doesn’t work in the business.

I don’t know about you but I seem to have a hard time with estimating how things are going to come out. I think things will be better than they really are and less worse than they really are. What about you, is this an issue for you?

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